I’ve seen enough reviews of this one to know that I’m definitely the odd woman out in my experience with this book but it failed to engage me for multiple reasons. The narration was fine but didn’t elevate the story enough to overcome my plot, character, and stylistic complaints. It’s not a bad book but I just found it so-so.

Publisher’s Blurb:

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it’s the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth’s last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie’s only hope for rescuing her brother—or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

My Thoughts:

Have you ever read a book and, when you break it down into its component parts, it’s obvious that you should have really enjoyed it but when you consider your overall experience with it, it was just sorta OK? That was my experience with The 5th Wave. I started out appreciating that the post-apocalyptic atmosphere was generated by an alien invasion rather than a man-made crisis but the shine wore off that aspect pretty quickly. The aliens are, for all intents and purposes, absent in the story. Oh, they’re hovering in a spaceship above planet earth. They’ve definitely caused damage to Earth and killed billions of humans. They’ve obviously made incursions onto the planet as well. My discontent is that there’s no backstory to the aliens which means there’s no depth to their motivation for the invasion and although we meet some aliens, they seem so completely human in their thought processes and actions that I could have easily been reading a regular ol’ dime-a-dozen post-apocalyptic novel.

I liked the concept of waves of destruction intended to decimate the earth’s population in phases rather than having a gun-toting alien force land and commence wholesale slaughter. I liked the way the author configured each wave as a different kind of attack. There wasn’t a lot of detail on how it was accomplished or scientific background to it but that was understandable since the description of the waves was primarily coming from a teenager who had experienced the terrible aftermath of each attack. The story of the progression of the attacks was also rolled out gradually and it worked well as an accompaniment to the story as we learned more about Cassie.

The book is presented from the points-of-view of four characters although two of them get the most page time. The part we see from Cassie’s little brother’s perspective was, with the exception of one scene, completely pointless in my opinion. The POV switches didn’t transition with any kind of noticeable logic and when we moved from a point of drama to an alternate perspective that was in a development phase, any energy built in the storyline was killed. The fact of the matter is, I actually wasn’t involved enough to be truly disappointed at the POV switch.

Part of my lack of involvement was because I wasn’t truly invested in these characters. I came away from the novel with pretty flat character précis:

Cassie: crushed on Ben in High School but Ben never noticed her. She had to flee the aliens with her father and brother but she was separated from them. She’s being hunted by a sniper. She gets shot and then she meets Evan and the girl who started off seeming competent became pointlessly stubborn and willing to put up with this strange guy who keeps standing outside her room/bathroom/any-room-she’s-in breathing heavily. (OK, maybe he wasn’t breathing heavily but he did come across as a creepy stalker.)

Evan: farmboy who lost his family. He rescues Cassie and proceeds to act all creepy stalker. He goes out every night hunting, never comes back with food, and insta-bonds with Cassie, refusing to let her do anything by herself.

Zombie: I can hear you saying it… “wait, wait, who’s Zombie? He wasn’t mentioned in the Publisher’s blurb!” I know, right? I was a little surprised when he showed up too, let alone discovering I was going to spend so much time with him. He’s probably the most interesting of the characters but his part in the story is to act as the third side in some zero-on-the-chemistry-meter love triangle and to act as grist for the story-line mill about the boot camp that’s set up in a military installation where young survivors are broken down and then rebuilt into a fighting force that’s sent out to kill anyone identified as an Other. I found the details and the build-up of the bootcamp scenes no different from most of the “we’re in the army now” movies I’ve watched that cover the topic. (Oh, as for the name “Zombie,” everyone had nicknames in the bootcamp so expect to read about Nugget, Poundcake, Oompa, Flintstone, Teacup, Tank, etc.)

Sammy: cute little boy who gets separated from his sister and his stuffed bear and lives with the hope she’ll come for him.

I took issue with a few plot items that didn’t strike me as logical, one of which was (mild spoiler):

View Spoiler »Why was Zombie inducted into the camp (large teenage football player) but Cassie was rejected as a candidate because she was too old? Especially when she later describes herself as possibly looking like a tween. « Hide Spoiler

My last complaint has to do with the writing. In addition to repetitious descriptions peppered throughout, there were a lot of short sentences; in fact, the average words per sentence count was 9.6. Sometimes that’s an effective way to build tension or create a sense of rapid forward momentum but not so much in this book. For example of the truncated nature of many sections of the book:

Nobody listened. He wasn’t the boss of us anymore. The People in Charge had arrived.

And then, just as unexpectedly as it had come, the helicopter made one last turn and thundered out of sight. The sound of its rotors faded. A heavy silence flooded in after it. We were confused, stunned, frightened. They must have seen us. Why didn’t they land?

We waited for the helicopter to come back. All morning we waited. People packed up their things.

***

They prowl in groups. They die in clumps. Clumps of smashups. Clumps of stalls. They glimmer in the distance like jewels. And suddenly the clumps stop. The road is empty for miles.

***

I looked up at Corporal Branch. “Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“He looks like Darth Vader,” Sammy whispered. “Sounds like him, too.”

“Right, and remember what happens? He turns into a good guy at the end.”

“Only after he blows up a whole planet and kills a lot of people.”

I couldn’t help it—I laughed. God, he was smart. Sometimes I thought he was smarter than me and Dad combined.

“You’re going to come later, Cassie?”

“You bet I am.”

“Promise?”

I promised. Whatever happened. No. Matter. What.

That was all he needed to hear. He pushed the teddy bear into my chest.

“Sam?”

“For when you’re scared. But don’t leave him.” He held up a tiny finger to emphasize his point. “Don’t forget.”

He stuck out his hand to the corporal. “Lead on, Vader!” Gloved hand engulfed pudgy hand. The first step was almost too high for his little legs.

…

Sammy was the last to board. The door closed. Dad tried to put his arm around me. I stepped away. The engine revved. The air brakes hissed.

When they weren’t short, they were often well-populated with commas which (as they absolutely should) the audiobook narrators gave their full attention. Unfortunately, this made even many of the longer sentences sound somewhat choppy.

I like the concept of the story and the idea of how it progressed but the writing style didn’t suit me and there was a bit too much information telegraphed in advance of events that gave them less impact that I would have liked. The ending was a little too quick and tidy and left me unsatisfied. I don’t consider this a bad book, just not a good book for me.

The Narration:

I’m resistant to giving an in-depth review of my experience with the narration because I’m finding it almost impossible not to conflate my issues with the text with complaints about the narration. My primary issue with the narration was the choppy nature of it but I think it’s safe to wholly ascribe that to the narrators’ diligence in chewing the syntax and giving full weight to the author’s intent (and punctuation) rather than a failure in the performance.

Both narrators have pleasant voices and provide the listener with distinct character voices. Phoebe Strole was especially good at infusing Cassie’s more sardonic lines with the perfect amount of humor and I snorted aloud more than once. Brandon Espinoza handled the voices of the various bootcamp recruits well. He gave them age-appropriate voices while also ably voicing the testosterone-fueled tension that erupted between them while maintaining a sense of the vulnerability present in their voices as their world seemed to crash around them.